Now Face to Face

by Karleen Koen

  From the fire, Colonel Perry pointed her out to Custis.

  “Is it true you are the only one those geese like, Edward?” asked Captain Randolph. “Do you know they chased me all the way back to my home the other day when I walked over to call.”

  “Geese like saints,” said Custis.

  I smell jasmine, thought Barbara, and dogwood, night and river. Harry ran ahead of her as she walked away from them. The full moon lit their way. At the first creek, she stepped out of her shoes, ran lithely along a plank, and stepped into the dinghy, Harry following. The moon above was like a coin. In the river, its reflection smiled upward. She began to row, taking pleasure in her skill, her strength, much increased with time.

  Keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.

  In the river, she undid the sail, tied the ropes fast, pulled in the oar, put her hand on the tiller. The wind on the river was just right. It was like sitting upon the back of a bird.

  She sailed by the party upon the bank. They waved and whistled to her, and daringly, she stood and bowed to them, the dinghy skimming along.

  Around a bend, when she felt safe and secluded, she dropped the anchor, lay back to stare up at the moon, bits of conversation echoing in her mind. Land: The Governor had talked of land in two new counties when he’d come to call, telling her she ought to patent it, that he would personally see her deeds approved. So now she’d patented land in those counties.

  She undid the lacings of her gown and the pins of her undergown, pulled her chemise from her body, and dropped, like a stone, into the water. It was cold, too cold. In her mind was the image of Blackstone, the expression upon his face as he kissed crumbs from Thérèse’s fingers. She began to swim.

  Harry barked. He would bark until she was aboard, but she swam until she was tired and numb with cold. Shivering, she pulled herself into the dinghy and dried herself with the chemise, looking down at her pale body, chaste now. She breathed in the moon and the river.

  Charles would never believe there had been no lovers for her, but then, the truth be told, she’d never been as wild as people thought. The wildness had been for Roger. See me, it said. Love me, it said. Others do. Why not you? Roger. She breathed in the moon and river.

  What will I do with all this passion inside me, she wondered, all the fire and grief and tenderness mixed within me? I could be like Aunt Shrew and collect men like jewelry. Do I want to do that? No.

  Make the bones which thou hast broken rejoice. Hyacinthe’s loss has broken me, and I am not the same. Will there ever be rejoicing again? What have I learned in Virginia? What do I take back with me? The ability to build a fire, to sail a dinghy. She looked up at the moon. The ability to survive, to run a plantation for months, to make decision after decision about it. I am not frightened now to go back to England and look at the debris of my estate.

  The girl in me is clear-eyed, absolutely determined—worse, in some ways, than ever. She laughed softly, and the laughter was like a spring gurgling, beguiling and charming. If Roger knew me now, she thought, he would be mine. But if I knew him now, would I be his?

  It saddened her, that into her love for Roger had come questions and disillusionment, as if in her maturing, she looked at him and saw his flaws. What a burden he had left her—the debt, the fine. She had no illusions about what she faced. Yet she loved him. He was the love of her girlhood, and that she would always honor.

  If you hurt Roger, Robin, I will avenge him, she thought, and the bones of her face set in a look those at home knew only too well. She was going to make an entry when she returned. Her arrival was not going to go unnoticed. She was going to bring the finest, the most remarkable gifts she could find to His Majesty, to the Prince and Princess. They were not going to be able to ignore her or dismiss her.

  Lacing herself back into her clothes as well as she could, she thought: The flirtatious, talking, jangling Barbara of my failed marriage is gone. Loss has burned her up, chastened her, tempered her, so that, like wood hollowed out to make a music pipe, I am something else now. What? Who? What is it now that I want to do with my life? What is it I desire? What is it I need? Truth: I want to live a life of truth and not lies. That, at least, has come out of this winter of grief.

  She wiggled her toes in the water, staring down at them. She was going to begin the fight, the campaign, the dance, to return Devane Square to that which was thriving and vital again. She was excited by that, proud of her labors here.

  She was going to seek a position at court. It would give her a place of safety—those she owed would be hesitant to force anything—from which to maneuver. There was other land Roger had bought. If land was important here, was it not important at home? Roger had had a gift for knowing what would be desired later, what would or could develop into something special. There was a warehouseful of furnishings, treasures Roger had accumulated, not touched by the South Sea fine. They might be sold, carefully, piece by piece. They’d sell even higher if she seemed reluctant to let them go.

  Tommy Carlyle. He knew all. He was an arbiter of taste. She was going to befriend him, use him to guide her. People followed his lead. He’d help make her tobacco fashionable.

  Adventure, said Wart.

  No, no more adventure for a time. She would proceed in an orderly fashion, a quiet fashion—Tony would be so pleased—to salvage herself and her estate. She would be placid and quiet in all her affairs, obedient, good, kind, meek. She smiled. She had never been able to be any of those for long—and likely her time here in Virginia had just made her worse. Never mind it, her grandmother would say, at least you are not dull. You’re fine as you are, my Bab.

  Grandmama.

  Barbara closed her eyes. You are so dear to me. I love you so. It will be so good to see you again, and Tony, and Jane.

  I will make friends with Tony’s wife so that she allows me a little of his company. Oh, Tony, you were so kind when Roger died, and I was too distraught to see it. But I see it clearly now. How can I repay you? What if I don’t like your wife? What if she is mean-spirited or cruel to you? What shall I do? I won’t behave, I know it. Oh, well.

  Rowing back around the bend, she saw her fire smoldering. Everyone was gone. She rowed as close as she could, stepped into the water, pulled the dinghy up, and poked at the coals with a stick; the fire burned brighter. She dragged some large limbs across it, and it flickered up at them. There was a blanket; Thérèse must have brought it. She wrapped it around herself and lay down in the sand, her cheek against it, moving her fingers in the soft sand.

  When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. Within you is all you need, said Colonel Perry. That is what you bring back with you from Virginia.

  Harry moved to lie against her stomach. The Governor would likely wish her to take letters, begging letters, pleading for his position.

  Robert Walpole lies with my mother. She’d not told the Governor that, but she smiled at the expression she could imagine upon his face if he knew. Walpole is your enemy, Carlyle had said.

  She turned on her side and slept for a time, waking with the feeblest light of dawn. There was Colonel Perry, against the bank, wrapped in a blanket, asleep himself; upon her, another blanket. She stood, shivering, stretching, saw the barrel Major Custis had fished out of the river. “Pork,” read the stamp on its side. Someone had broken it open. Walking over to it, she stared down.

  Colonel Perry opened his eyes to see her squatting, rifling through wet tobacco leaves.

  “Many smuggle, Barbara,” he said. “I’ve done so myself. By law, all the tobacco must go to England, and we must take the price we can, besides pay import duties, so that in hard times, we make less than nothing for our tobacco, pile up a loss to send it over. Tobacco is selling low, lower than anyone imagined last year at this time. I’m not the only one who knows it now. It may be years before we look at profits. You cannot blame a man if he finds a better market elsewhere, particularly when his pla
ntation is mortgaged. Men make laws, Barbara, men like myself, like you, men with faults, with greed in them, with malice. There are bad laws, as well as good ones.”

  “I could take Bolling to court.”

  “For what?”

  “On a charge of smuggling. With this as evidence.”

  “You could. But half the men who tried him would have done the same, and would be reluctant to convict him for a crime they all commit and see little harm in.”

  “I could tell the Governor.”

  “You could do that. Remember, however, he is governor only for a time. He will have other things upon his mind, such as salvaging what he can; adding more enemies to his list of those already there will not be wise.”

  “Why not, if he is no longer governor?”

  “I don’t think he intends to return to England. I think he intends to live on his plantation in the mountains. He won’t want more enemies.”

  “I feel as if something significant, something large, has just brushed its wings against me, and for the life of me I do not understand. It has to do with this barrel.”

  “The sun is rising. Here’s the new day. Come and sit by me. How I will miss you. Do you know the psalm of David that begins, ‘He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty’? You must, if your grandmother reads prayers every night. I thought so. Say it now with me, as we watch the sun rise.”

  She lay back against him. He took her hand in his and brought it to his mouth and kissed the fingers one by one.

  “I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.”

  “I know no more,” said Barbara.

  He continued alone:

  “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.”

  He hugged Barbara, skipping several verses.

  “‘For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways.’ Remember that, Barbara.”

  The sun was up. A new day had begun.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  JUST DON’T STAND THERE. PUT THEM ALL ABOUT THE ALTAR,” said Annie.

  They’d heard the first cuckoo. It was April. Bluebells and lady’s-smocks were blooming.

  In Tamworth Church, Annie watched Bathsheba begin to arrange boughs from the plum and apple trees, the cherry and almonds, blossoms shut tight yet, but lovely, like lacy, airy fairies landed, wings held in. “Laurence Slane is not in London,” wrote the Duke of Tamworth. Annie gathered a handful of willow branches to begin hanging them about the church walls, but then walked instead to the window and looked out. Her view was the graveyard, in which leaned gravestones and cracked table tombs, a scene defined by the lead crisscrossings in the window out of which she looked.

  The election was just over. The men who were allowed to vote in Tamworth had elected Tommy Carlyle, as the Duke of Tamworth had requested them to do.

  Clouds were gathering above yew trees, whose tops had begun to sway a bit as the wind grew rougher. There would be rain tonight, thought Annie, trying to still the sensation of foreboding within her. They’d have to walk to church in the rain on the morrow. It was Palm Sunday.

  The coming celebrations of April spread themselves out in Annie’s mind. On Maundy Thursday, the Duchess and all the servants would wash the feet of vagabonds and beggars, giving them food and coins. On Good Friday, Cook would make his hot cross buns, the cross of sugar sticky and sweet atop the bun, and then would come Easter.

  Festivals and rituals, marking their year.

  Christ our passover is sacrificed for us, Vicar Latchrod would say, therefore let us keep the feast; Not with the old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness: but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

  “Tell me the rest of the last lines of your duty toward your neighbor.” She was teaching the Gypsy the catechism. She didn’t know why.

  “‘To keep my hands from picking and stealing, and my tongue from evil speaking, and…’” The Gypsy spoke so softly. “I forget the rest.”

  “You’d best remember.”

  Bathsheba the silent outcast, accepted by none of the other servants, eating alone, working alone, always alone. The Gypsy had braided apple blossom into the willow of the basket in which her baby slept. There was something not right with the child. Annie saw it in the set of his eyes, the shape of his mouth and nose. The Gypsy would have him on her hands forever.

  The foreboding did not go away. A dark cloud merged into another one outside the window, and there was a rumble of thunder. The church felt damp and cold to Annie.

  “Storm coming.”

  Bathsheba’s voice was soft.

  Yes, thought Annie, Bathsheba feels it, too.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  APRIL. IN LONDON, SLANE SHOOK HIS HEAD. “NO, NOTHING else, Louisa. You’ve fed me as if I was a prince.”

  There were candles burning everywhere, a long tablecloth of Belgian lace on the table at which he sat, before him the remains of a feast: roasted chicken, quail, fish. He was only just back from France. Aunt Shrew had all but fed him herself, so glad was she to see him. She poured more wine into his goblet.

  “The physician in Paris said I must not drink too much wine.”

  “And what else did he say about your hurt?”

  Ride nowhere on horseback. Rest every day in a darkened chamber. Slane crumbled a piece of bread to nothing. “To take care.”

  “And you’ve been on horseback since you arrived. We have some time before Lord North and the Duke of Wharton arrive. Tell me how you found Rochester.”

  Arrogant, melancholy, somehow pitiful.

  “Distraught about his wife, who is near to dying.”

  His wife’s illness had pushed Rochester to the edge. He had not the courage for both the invasion and her death. Time, thought Slane, lessens courage. I see that. If we live long enough, we become cowards. He rubbed his brow. The choice of Rochester to lead had always been fraught with risk. Everyone had known it, only no one wished to pay the forfeit.

  “He wished to know if I despised him.”

  “He wanted absolution for abandoning us.”

  “He does not abandon us.”

  “I hope you didn’t give absolution to him. You did, I see it.”

  Slane sidestepped her. “He voices what are true concerns for our success, supports us in any way possible—”

  “Except to lead us? You may forgive him, but I never will. I don’t like the new plan, Slane, this waiting until King George goes upon his summer pilgrimage to Hanover. It takes the edge off, to wait too long. Disgusting is the only word for what King George’s ministers have made of the election. There were riots in Westminster and Coventry over how voting went. Never has there been such open purchase of votes. Besmirched, I feel besmirched by it all, as if everything, every one of us, might be bought at the market. I am not the only one who feels that the tone of our court is ugly and venal. The time is ripe. Why can they not invade as planned?”

  He did not answer.

  Rochester’s letter had shocked those in Paris and Rome and Madrid who were feverishly pulling together the last threads. The letter made them cautious. It was his duty to persuade those here to the new plan, but like Louisa, Slane did not like it that the invasion was put off.

  Ormonde had ships, solders, arms ready in Spain. King James was poised to join him. They were confident France was going to supply thirty thousand troops. Slane had argued as forcefully as he could that Rochester’s letter should be ignored, that they should proceed as planned, that those in England would not fail, never mind what Rochester thought.

  “So, the invasion is put off until May
, you come to pull us all into obedience again, and who, in their great wisdom, have those in Paris decided will now lead the rebellion here?”

  Slane told her the name. It did not matter. What was necessary now was simply a figurehead, a symbol. The man who had agreed to lead, to take over for Rochester, was an old Tory lord whom time had mastered. Once he had been the wiliest of Queen Anne’s ministers, but he’d been sent to the Tower of London after King George came to the throne. The man had listened carefully to Slane, who explained how the plot was in its last stages. I’m not what I once was, he had told Slane.

  No one has to know that, Slane had replied. Simply tell the others what I ask you to. It is your name I need, not your vigor. Aunt Shrew was pleased. If she accepted, so would the others. Slane felt relieved.

  “It’s a good choice,” she was saying. “He is the only man every one of us respects. It is, in fact, a brilliant choice. I feel more hopeful myself, knowing he has agreed. Well, what a busy man you’ve been, Laurence Slane. Did you call upon King George himself and request that he leave early for his journey to Hanover? Was that among your instructions for salvaging us? What is it, Pinchwit? I told you I was not to be disturbed.”

  “Tommy Carlyle asks to see you, madam,” the servant said, and to Slane, “The little dog is crying. We’ve given it milk.”

  “We have time before the others come,” said Aunt Shrew. “Carlyle will have some gossip no one else yet knows. I’ll go hear it, and then I’ll send him on his way. You know, Tony has taken Carlyle as his creature. Still waters may run deeper than we know. What dog?”

  “A little spotted dog. A gift.”

  “For whom?”

  “For Rochester.”

  She bristled. “For Rochester! From whom?”

  “King James.”

  “Since when does King James give gifts to cowards?”